


The Heat Between Us

by Emyvio



Series: Emy's One Shots [7]
Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Child Abuse, Love Confessions, M/M, Mentions of drugs, Morality | Patton Sanders Needs a Hug, Patton Has a Bad Childhood, Severe Child Neglect, Starvation, Touch Repulsion, Touch-Starved, but he doesn't want one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-04
Updated: 2021-02-04
Packaged: 2021-03-16 00:08:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29198124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Emyvio/pseuds/Emyvio
Summary: Patton doesn’t like to be touched. But maybe he’d be ok if it was Remus touching him
Relationships: Dark Creativity | Remus "The Duke" Sanders/Morality | Patton Sanders
Series: Emy's One Shots [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2010451
Comments: 4
Kudos: 65





	The Heat Between Us

Patton didn’t touch people.

It’s not like he didn’t  _ want  _ to touch people. Well, for a while it wasn’t. When Patton was little, he  _ loved  _ the idea of touch. He would hug his pillows and wrap himself in blankets, pretending that he was getting the bestest hug ever. He would hold his own hand and giggle, imagining that he was shaking someone else’s hand.

He would cry in bed at night, a new bruise on his cheek, wondering why he wasn’t allowed to touch.

Patton wasn’t allowed to do a lot of things. He couldn’t leave his room (“Why do you need to leave? We give you food every day, and you have your own bathroom. You don’t need more, you ungrateful brat!”), he couldn’t ask for more food (“Stop being so greedy! We fed you yesterday! Are you calling me a liar?!”), he couldn’t tell anyone anything. That last rule seemed redundant, since Patton never actually  _ saw  _ anyone, but he followed it anyway.

But the rule that made him sad was the no-touch rule.

Patton didn’t get to actually  _ see  _ people often- only when they remembered to feed him or clean his laundry- but they  _ hated  _ it when Patton touched them. They would scream and yell and hit him until he was begging them to go away. After a while, Patton only associated ‘touch’ with ‘pain.’

When Patton was 10, he was surprised to find someone other than  _ them  _ (he didn’t actually know their names, but he refused to call them his mom and dad) kick open the door. Patton vaguely recognized the thing in their hand as  _ gun-weapon-hurt  _ and whimpered, running to hide in the bathroom. There wasn’t a lock on the bathroom door, but the person seemed to realize that Patton was  _ not  _ happy right now, so they stayed outside and talked to him through the door.

After a while of one-sided talking, Patton was eventually coaxed out of the bathroom. The police officer (Patton had been panicking too much to remember their name) reached out to touch him and he flinched, already wanting to run back to the bathroom. When they asked if he was hurt, Patton shook his head (rule number 3: don’t tell them  _ anything _ ) and asked if they could not touch him.

Patton learned that the people who took care of him were drug dealers, and no one knew that they had a son. They had been arrested a few days ago (his painfully empty stomach agreed with that), and the officer was checking the house for any incriminating evidence when they stumbled upon Patton’s locked door.

They asked Patton a lot of questions, but Patton refused to answer. He might have broken a rule by leaving his room, but he wasn’t going to break the rest of them. And besides, he didn’t trust them with how many times they tried to  _ touch  _ him. They already made him get looked at by a doctor, and he was nearly sobbing in pain by the end of it. Every touch felt like he was on fire, and it hurt almost as much as getting hit.

After that, Patton was sent to some foster homes. Homes, plural, because no one seemed to want Patton for more than a few weeks before sending him back, wanting nothing to do with him. It was probably because Patton wanted nothing to do with them either. He was used to being alone, only seeing people on the cracked TV in his room. So when these people wanted him to talk to them about things he’d never heard, play games that he’d never played before, or even  _ touch him,  _ he didn’t give them smiles and ‘thank yous.’ Instead, he screamed and cried and ran away, finding tiny places to curl up and hide.

Eventually, he was sent to a family that understood that he didn’t want to be touched. Lydia and Samantha Heart were okay with Patton not wanting to be touched. They didn’t force him to spend time with them other than meals (so they knew he was eating enough), but they always offered him a chance to spend time with them, doing whatever he wanted. It was… baffling, to have someone understand, but Patton was happy with it. They started fostering him when he was 13 and fully adopted him when he was almost 15.

Patton eventually became used to his new life. He learned that he loved to draw, since it let him express things that he didn’t know how to write. He liked to draw things that he saw on the cracked TV in his old room, like fairies and princesses. He spent a lot of time hiding away in his room, but now he spends more time out in the living room with his new parents. He liked to call them ‘Madre’ and ‘Momma.’ Madre taught him how to make different desserts and Momma taught him how to knit and crochet. He was struggling to catch up with his ‘school’ work (he didn’t understand why he needed it, he’d never gone to ‘school’ before and most of the work seemed pointless) but they were helping him a lot through homeschooling, with Madre teaching him math and science while Momma taught him history and english.

But even after all of that, Patton didn’t want to be touched. After he started calling them his moms, he tried letting them touch him to make them happy. Casual touches made him flinch, kisses made him hiss, and hugs made him ready to cry. It was painful and he hated it. After a few weeks of trying, his moms let it drop. They weren’t going to force Patton through that. So, Patton never touched anyone. And for a long time, he was fine with that.

But then the Princes moved in next door, and suddenly everything changed.

Mr and Mrs Prince weren’t very interesting, but they were still better than most people Patton had interacted with. Mrs Prince’s smile seemed genuine, and Mr Prince didn’t get upset when Patton didn’t shake his hand. They had two children, a pair of identical twins named Roman and Remus. They were both a year older than Patton, and they went to the local highschool just under a mile away. They were both dramatic and constantly happy, loving to tell stories to anyone who would listen. Some people might say that they were impossible to tell apart, but to Patton they were easy to tell apart (or, more accurately, they were easy to tell apart when they were around Patton).

Patton wasn’t a very big fan of Roman. He was loud, and prideful, and  _ touchy.  _ He liked to yell and draw attention to himself, and Patton hated the second-hand attention he got from hanging out with Roman in public. Roman was also a physically affectionate person, always giving people pats on the back or pulling them into a hug. And while he understood that Patton didn’t like to be touched, physical affection was so natural for Roman that he tended to forget until he was already touching him. That doesn’t mean that Patton disliked Roman, far from it actually. He just preferred it if they weren’t in public together. And have a good amount of distance between them.

Remus was different. He was the quieter twin, for one. He didn’t yell, he didn’t like to draw attention to himself (unless he was messing with Roman), and unlike Roman, Remus understood that the world wasn’t just black and white. Roman’s stories always had a clear hero and villain, where the hero never did wrong and the villain was always irredeemable. But Remus knew that the world didn’t work that way, and the stories he told reflected that. He also understood how much it hurt Patton to be touched, but that he didn’t want people to avoid him like the plague. He always made sure to be as close as physically possible to Patton without touching him, and if he ever needed to touch something near Patton he always told him so they wouldn’t accidentally touch. Other than the one instance where Remus had to push Patton out of the way of a rogue frisbee, they had never touched before. And that was fine. Perfect, even. Until today

Right on the property line between the two houses was a large sycamore tree. Every afternoon, Remus would climb the tall tree and lay amongst its branches as if they were his throne. Patton would always sit at the base of the tree, nestled between its roots. He would look up at the older teen and try to ignore the blush on his cheeks. He was sure by now that he had a crush on Remus, but he would never tell anyone that, especially Remus. After all, who could ever love someone that doesn’t want to be touched?

So every day, Patton would sit under this tree, listening to his crush share his stories. They were dark, and disturbing, usually sad with no concise ending. Most people hated Remus’ stories, so he never told them to anyone outside of Patton. Patton loved his stories. He’d grown up without being taught about empathy or ‘good always triumphs over evil.’ Roman’s stories, like most stories, tended to assume that the audience would naturally empathize with the characters, which Patton just couldn’t do. Remus knew this, and his stories gave Patton a reason to feel for the characters. They weren’t just random characters that did good because it was the ‘right thing.’ They did it for revenge, or love, or their own selfish goals. And to Patton, it made sense. He understood why he needed to care about these characters, and in a way, it helped him realize why he cared about the teen that came up with them.

One day, Patton was at the bottom of the tree, sketching the afternoon sun while Remus told his story, when the older boy paused. “It looks a lot better from up here.”

Patton frowned, looking up. “What does?”

Remus shrugged. “The sky. The landscape. Everything looks better from up here.” He looked down at Patton and smirked. “Wanna see for yourself?”

Patton blushed and looked away. “But I don’t know how to climb a tree.” He never had a need to climb anything before, and while he could probably climb something like a ladder, there was  _ no way  _ he could climb a tree without help. And ‘help’ meant ‘pull up,’ and that meant  _ ‘touch,’  _ and Patton did  _ not  _ want to have a panic attack today.

Remus chuckled. “I’ve solved that part. Walk around the tree.” Patton got up and made his way to the back of the tree, where a blue and white rope ladder hung from its branches. “I asked Dad to set it up yesterday while you were at the doctor. Now you can climb the tree with me!”

Patton giggled and hastily climbed the rope ladder, joining Remus up in the tree’s branches. He was right; the sunset was  _ breathtaking  _ from up here. They sat up there for hours just talking about whatever came to mind. Patton loved having these conversations with Remus. He had been trapped alone in that room for so long, with only his thoughts to keep him company. Patton always felt bad after his first foster family told him not to share those thoughts, since they weren’t normal. They were weird, and disturbing, and Patton constantly tried to forget that they ever existed. But with Remus he didn’t have to. With Remus he could say whatever popped up in his mind without fear of being ridiculed. It was nice, and sometimes during these talks Remus would give him a smile that made his entire heart melt.

The sun was setting as they sat next to each other in the tree, laughing and telling fantastical stories. Their shoulders brushed slightly as Remus doubled over with laughter and Patton shuddered at the warmth. Usually the warmth hurt, usually it burned and made him hurt for hours afterwards. But this was different. Now, his heart was warmer than Remus’s touch, and for the first time in years, Patton wanted someone to touch him. Specifically, he wanted Remus to touch him. Remus, the person Patton trusted most in this world.

“Pat?” Patton looked up at Remus, who was still facing the sunset. “I…” He took a deep breath and turned to face Patton. If Patton had been anyone else, he was sure Remus would’ve taken his hand. “I think I love you.”

Patton’s heart both soared and shattered at the same time. “How could you love someone that you can’t touch?”

Remus chuckled. “I would gladly go a thousand years without touching anyone ever again, if it meant I could keep staring at your beautiful face for a few minutes.”

Patton blushed and looked away. Before he could second-guess himself, Patton laid his hand on top of Remus’. It burned, and Patton’s immediate instinct was to pull away, but he didn’t move, relishing in the warmth he felt. “I think I’d like to try. To touch.”

Remus smiled brightly, like Patton had just told him that he’d won a million dollars. “We’ll take it at your pace, okay? Whatever makes you comfortable.”

Patton nodded, looking off at the sunset. “Remus?”

“Yes?”

“I love you too.”


End file.
